11. Finn
11
FINN
I wrap her in a fluffy towel, and I’m a terrible person, because I can’t keep away, so I use the two ends to trap her, draw her towards me and kiss her mouth. A tender kiss that doesn’t reveal how I crave her again, but more this time. I need her complete surrender.
Back in the bedroom, we both dress silently, and it’s only when we’re both fully clothed—she’s in a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a T-shirt that I instantly want to remove—that I approach her with the cuffs. She sighs and offers me her hands.
A sense of peace descends on me as I secure them to her wrists. She can’t escape me.
“What do we do now?” she asks as she tests the cuffs.
“This is your party,” I point out. “You brought me here.”
She huffs. “You aren’t the guest I was expecting.”
“Less related and less addicted,” I agree. “Isn’t that a good thing? What were you going to do with Noah?”
“I had a load of therapy things for addicts planned. Walks, food, reflective questions, and exercises. That sort of stuff.”
She looks sad, and that sounds like a lot of work that she put into this. My sweet pet. She didn’t know I had it all in hand for her. The update on Noah I got this morning is that he’s being open to the first stages of the process. Admittedly, he has the threat that I’ll kill him if he doesn’t get his act together. And he’s unaware it’s an empty threat, because he isn’t aware that I’m in love with his sister, and would rather gnaw off my own arm than upset her.
“Will you show me?” I say gently.
She sighs, and gestures with her chin to her bag. “It’s all in a folder.”
“Go on then.” I’m not going through her stuff again. That way lies madness.
It takes her a moment to get a blue document wallet with her hands tethered, and she brings it to me, then rolls her eyes when I don’t take it.
“Finn. What am I supposed to do? Hold it with my teeth?”
“Your mouth should be put to better use,” I mutter, but I can’t help but smile. I grab the key from my pocket and undo the cuff on her left hand.
“What are you doing?”
I snap the cuff over my left hand and Millie’s eyes widen in surprise.
“Giving you use of one hand, but preventing you from escaping.” Keeping her close, more importantly. I tug her with me and lead her downstairs to the lounge. Away from the temptation of the bed.
I pull her onto the sofa by our linked wrists, but she resists, sitting bolt upright where I would prefer she was closer to me.
“Is that comfortable?”
“Yes.”
Sighing, I ease back onto the cushions.
“Don’t lie to me, Millie.” I tug on her wrist, and because she’s so on edge, it unbalances her immediately. I take the advantage, and lift my arm over her head as she falls, bringing her to rest in the crook of my armpit against my chest.
She gasps, but my arm is resting over her belly now, keeping her to me when I think she’d otherwise wriggle up. Then she exhales and sinks into me.
“See, that’s better.”
I look at the notebook again. It’s bursting with printouts and covered with bookish stickers, including one that says, “Came for the Plot”.
“The plot, eh,” I comment as I flick it open.
“I like books,” she mutters.
The first paper has an addiction recovery plan, with steps. The next is a different version. Then there are pages and pages of detailed notes.
“You did all this, for your brother?” There are days of research and work in this notebook.
Her lip trembles, and when she nods, I know it’s because she doesn’t trust her voice.
“He’s very lucky to have you.”
It falls open on a page that has most of the paper stuffed in, and there is a list headed “Questions to encourage communication from addicts” in cutely rounded handwriting.
I skim down the notes.
“Tell me about events that led you to where you are,” I read aloud.
“It was dark,” she replies promptly. “I couldn’t see, and I thought you were my brother.”
“Mmm. I’ll let you get away with that excuse for now.” But before the week is up, she’s going to admit that she knew she didn’t have her brother. Aside from anything else, he’s a good two inches shorter than me. “Go on then. Tell me what led you to kidnapping a kingpin.”
“Nothing,” she replies defensively.
“Yeah, I believe you.” I shake my head. “Totally normal reaction. Everyday. Happens four times a month and extra in February.”
“There’s nothing! I’m normal.”
That’s true, and yet it’s not. “You’re twenty-two, right?”
“How do you know that?”
Stalking.
“I know many things, comes with the job.” I’m not telling her I’ve found out everything I can about her. I know her birthday, and her address. I know where she works, and I had one of my men hack into the CCTV so I can watch her. I know where she buys her coffee before her shifts at the hospital, and which books she downloads to read on her phone. Her age is just a filthy little side note. She’s too innocent for me, but I can’t bring myself to stop.
“You’re very young to be taking on your brother’s addiction.” Or to be a kingpin’s obsession.
She shrugs. “I’m the only one.”
Indeed. For me, too.
“What about your parents?” I ask, although I know the answer already.
“They’re dead, and I can’t just let him destroy his life, and mine.” She sounds miserable.
“Friends? Or family friends?” I’ve only been finding out about her for a week. I might have missed something.
She shakes her head. “My parents weren’t like that.”
“Why didn’t you ask someone else to help?” Me. She could have asked me.
“Don’t you get it? There’s no one.” Her voice breaks at the end of the sentence, and her body suddenly feels heavier against my chest, like the weight of her burden of carrying all this responsibility is more present in her than before.
“That sounds very lonely.”
She nods jerkily. Reluctant and proud, even now.
“You’ve had to be so strong.” I stroke her hair. “Dealing with this on your own. Bet it was hard.”
She gives a little squeak, as though she’s trying to say yes, but can’t fully get the word out.
“You’ve done so well.” I tighten my fingers, making her feel my hold on her, in a wordless message of “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
She curls into me, and I absorb it all. Her disappointment in her brother and her parents, all her loneliness. I keep stroking her hair and neck.
The act of being what she needs soothes me in a way I hadn’t expected. I like being her pillow as she lets out all the tension she’s been holding.
“Want to tell me about it?” I prompt. My cuffed hand creeps over hers and our fingers gradually interlace. No doubt she hasn’t noticed, but I’m aware of every fractional shift that leads to my big paw to be linked with her dainty, vulnerable little hand.
“There’s not much to tell,” she says between sniffs.
“When did you start looking after Noah?”
She shrugs. “I always have.”
The story comes out in patches and my heart breaks for the small girl that she was, taking on all the responsibilities of an adult. That’s what big sisters were for , she was told, and she still obviously believes that, even as she reveals how her parents were neglectful. How she had to fend for herself and her younger brother time after time. The occasion they were left home alone for two weeks at Christmas when Millie was eleven and Noah nine, and Millie couldn’t figure out how to use the oven, so they had cereal and sandwiches leaves me biting back that it’s a good thing they’re dead, otherwise I’d kill them myself.
“Cold food still makes me sick,” she jokes, and bile rises in my throat. I’ll cook for her every day. She’ll never eat anything cold with me.
They used Millie as an unpaid carer for her younger brother, and then, to cap it all, died in a plane crash when she was eighteen and about to leave for university and she was left as her brother’s guardian.
Resting fully on me now, she takes a deep, contented sigh and shifts. Her free hand touches my forearm. For a second it’s just accidental. Then it’s not. She’s stroking my arm hair, and tracing the pattern of my tattoos beneath.
“So you see, there’s only Noah and me,” she says, petting my forearm like it’s her emotional support animal. I think she might have forgotten it’s attached to me at all. Not a problem. I can be that for her. “And that’s why I need to return to London. I fucked up my little ‘intervention’.”
“You should have asked for help from me, pet.”
She huffs sceptically.
“Go on. Ask now,” I say gently.
“I already have. I’ve offered to take you back to London and you refused because you want compensation.”
“Ask me why it was me who walked out of the back door of the pub that night, when you expected your brother?”
Her hand pauses on my arm, and she twists so she can look into my face.
“Why didn’t my brother come out from the pub?” she echoes tentatively, eying me as though she’s about to step off a cliff and she’s not sure I’ve made her wings strong enough.
“He’s at my house,” I reply simply. “With a gambling addiction therapist, and without his phone, which is why he hasn’t messaged you.” The outrageously expensive therapist told me firmly that it was too much temptation to have his phone with him.
Her jaw drops open. “But you, I…”
“You think I don’t know what is happening with my employees,” I say dryly.
“You know about the private lives of all of them?”
“No. Your brother is special.”
A bolt of panic crosses her face, and I laugh.
“Not like that. Not for himself, pet. Ask me why I walked out of the pub.”
A little crease forms between her eyes, and I reach and smooth it away. She leans into my touch, and I end up with my fingers laced in her hair.
“You came to tell me about Noah?”
I nod. “To invite you to stay with me for the duration of his treatment.”
“At your house?”
“At your house, as it turned out.”
It’s some hours after the revelation of Noah being in treatment back in London and I’ve explained the whole process to her. She’s read the updates from the therapist on my phone and discovered everything is as I promised. Afterwards, we watched a movie, with her snuggled in my arms, and had a walk along the beach, her knuckles brushing mine all the way until I gave in and grabbed her hand.
Now we’re back at the cottage, in the kitchen as the sun sets outside.
“I can help,” she suggested when I paused, wondering how best to do things when cuffed together.
“No,” was the simple answer. She doesn’t cook anymore. I’m not her brother, for her to look after, or one of her patients. I provide for her . And if that sounds caveman-ish? Well, I guess that’s why the Irish have a bit of a reputation.
So I rejoined her hands, made her a drink, and set about cooking something hot and delicious for her to eat.
“What about you? What happened that you became the mafia don of Kilburn? Parents dead? Tragic backstory?” she says lightly when she’s run out of questions about food.
I catch her eye, and she’s trying to appear nonchalant, but the intensity of her sidelong gaze reveals her. She’s as curious about me as I am about her.
“Both my parents are alive, and I have six brothers and sisters back in Ireland. My father runs the Cork mafia, so you could say it’s the family business.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “But why London?”
“I’m the middle of seven children. No one took any notice of me, I was just the middle boy of the O’Connor family when I was a kid. I think it lit a fire under me to prove myself on my own, so I came to London when I was your age. It took me a few years,” and more than a few murders, “but I got control of Kilburn.”
“And are you happy with your life?” She reads from the notebook as she plays with a strand of her hair that has come loose from her ponytail and glints in the evening light.
“I thought being on my own would make me happy, since I left because Cork felt too crowded. But I feel like something has been missing, and it wasn’t my family back in Ireland. Going to visit them was no help. I didn’t realise until very recently what the feeling was. I was lonely.”
“But you spend every night in the pubs of Kilburn, laughing, drinking, and…” She blushes and looks away.
“And having women throw themselves at me,” I finish for her.
“Mmmhum.” Her eyebrows lower fractionally.
“Are you jealous, pet?” I fecking love that idea. Let her be possessive of me. She can be a lioness protecting what’s hers.
“Pfft. Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffs, but there’s something insincere about it.
I grab her chin and force her to meet my eyes. And I was right. She’s practically green. “Liar.”
Biting her lip, her gaze slides away.
“Pet,” I say severely. “Look at me.”
She does, and the wobble of concern is so clear in her that my heart aches and lifts simultaneously. “I haven’t flirted with anyone since we met. I know I have a reputation as a player,” and it’s warranted, “but I haven’t slept with anyone for almost seven years.”
“Really?” she says, scepticism pouring out of her.
“Yes. I was lonely, and I didn’t realise why having women didn’t fill the gap.”
The flicker of hurt and fury is back at the word women, like it’s repeating on her. Won’t be mentioning that again. I’ll never do anything that makes her feel worried that she isn’t the whole of my life. My sun, around which everything else spins.
“And in the end, I stopped, because it just made the ache worse. Spending time with my family, or the men under my command doesn’t help either.”
“I know what it is to be lonely,” she confesses, leaning her head into my palm as I shift to cup her jaw, but it’s almost pained. Reluctant. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I have found one thing that makes me feel whole.” I dangle the bait before her.
It’s her. I’ll tell her, if she just asks.
“I’m glad.” But she doesn’t sound glad. She’s gone brittle, and sits up, flicking open her notebook. “Hey, what about this question? ‘What would your life be like if you didn’t think about your addiction anymore?’”
“Shite.” Simple answer. The thought of going back to life before Millie holds about as much appeal as living in an underground bunker the size of a coffin for the next forty years. I can barely breathe at the very idea of how unbearable it would be.
“Ah. Well.” Her mouth twists and she shifts position on the sofa. “I think you’re supposed to answer that freedom would be better.”
“It wouldn’t for me. Are you not going to ask me what makes my life complete, pet?”
“It’s not gambling is it?” she asks, faux lightly.
“No, but it is an obsession of sorts,” I confess hoarsely.
“Oh.” She nibbles her lip, and shakes her head, and mutters, “I guess I know. Sex. Women.”
Ah feck. I’ve built my reputation of being a playboy to be bulletproof, and Millie believes it as absolutely as anyone in London. And why do I think she shouldn’t? If I said I think I’m in love with her, she wouldn’t believe me, and I don’t blame her.
“Come on. Hot food for my captive.”
She looks up at me, confusion in her expression.
And I smile.
Because I can’t tell her, but I can show her.
Later, she falls asleep in my arms again.
I stay awake for a long, long time.
I have one week to make her love me, and more importantly, trust that I’m not a player anymore. I’m hers.